Students Build A DIY Version Of Star Trek’s Holodeck

Students at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and the Viterbi School of Engineering are working on a concept called ‘Project Holodeck‘, which hopes to create a virtual reality play space similar to the holodeck from sci-fi series Star Trek. This would provide gamers with a 360° full-body immersive experience. The consumer-facing VR play space is being built with off-the-shelf components, cutting-edge custom software, and creatively integrated peripherals, at a fraction of the price of industrial VR systems.

Project Holodeck uses the Oculus RIFT head-mounted display (created by Palmer Luckey and announced at this year’s E3) for visual feedback with a wide and immersive field of view. In conjunction with this device, the team is developing custom software that networks Kinects and other peripherals like the PlayStation Move and the Razer Hydra to allow gamers to experience full-body positional tracking in the VR play space. They are also creating their own VR game Wild Skies to debut with the official launch of the Holodeck platform next year. You can see the Project Holodeck concept in action in the video below: